Big changes are afoot at search giant Google, with three big innovations changing the way nonprofits develop their websites and help their clients find them.

Search engines are getting smarter all the time (with the possible exception of Bing) so they can keep up with the way we search. In the early days of search engines, users had to think carefully about their keywords and even then, would sometimes struggle to get a good result. But when was the last time Google failed to give you exactly what you were looking for?

Enter: Google Hummingbird

The latest in the search revolution is Google Hummingbird, an ingenious update that allows users to talk with the search engine. Google is, now more than ever, looking for the intent of your search, not just keywords. So if you have a string of questions, you need not repeat yourself.

Gives a full page of Google Image search results (who is a quarterback, for those not in the know).

How tall is he

Shows his height, in a box. You don’t even have to click on anything to get the answer because it’s one of the facts Google itself remembers in its Knowledge Graph.

When did he start playing football

Gives a page of links to biographic articles and his Wikipedia page.

The key difference here is that the second and third search terms did not contain the keywords “Tom Brady”. Google gives you this result because it remembers you asking about him. It also uses synonyms and what Google calls co-citations, which is basically when your organization is listed alongside another which the search engine recognizes as being a leader in the field.

For nonprofits, this is great news. It means your clients are much more likely to find you using a string of related search queries; but it also means you need to make sure your site “answers” the new questions search engines are going to ask of it. Let’s say you work for an animal shelter. Your client may ask of Google the following questions:

Where can I adopt a dog?

Google gives results for some local and national shelters.

What does it cost

As soon as I start typing “what does it cost”, Google suggests I ask “what does it cost to adopt a dog”. This is Hummingbird at work.

To find out what related searches might be used by your clients, try to think through the path they might use to get to your site. It is also really helpful to look at the related searches section at the bottom of the first page of results (but please note: if you’re logged in to any Google products, these searches will be tailored to you).

Holy hell, where did my keywords go?

The bad news is that Google has also made all its searches secure. This will make civil libertarians a little happier but it means your Google Analytics account will no longer tell you which keywords are used to reach your website.

Nonprofits are especially vulnerable to this change because they usually don’t have the people-power, money or knowledge to invest in marketers and search engine optimization (SEO) specialists. SEO is a billion-dollar industry based on getting better search performance. Some of their tricks are legitimate, such as improving the way a website is organized or how pages are labelled. Sometimes, SEO is improved through nefarious means, like stacking hundreds of keywords in a website’s code or creating hundreds of links to it from other places so Google thinks the site is popular and therefore pushes it up the top of its search results.

So even though it seems mean that Google Analytics has taken our toys away, it is the best weapon the search giant has against spammers. Nonprofits should actually benefit, if they’re smart, because SEO spammers can’t steal as much of your organic (or unpaid) traffic. The golden rule is: if you have good-quality and relevant content, you should rise to the top of the search results. This is Google’s way of making sure that is more the case.

And you can still make educated guesses at what keywords are driving your traffic. For example, if you look at the paths users take through your website, you can usually work out what keyword they’re using to get there. For example, if you’re running an animal shelter website and 70 per cent of your web traffic goes straight to your adoption page, it’s likely users are using “pet adoption” or its synonym to find your site. SearchEngineWatch has more tips here.

Who says?

Google is yet to reveal its much-anticipated Author Rank update but experts reckon it will prioritize verified and well-regarded writers, bloggers and social media accounts over others. How it will judge this is anyone’s guess but it’s likely to use a blend of social media verification (like Twitter’s blue tick) and the number of authoritative sites pointing to your content.

It is vital that nonprofits take advantage of verification programs available and be seen as experts in their field – according to your community as well as Google – lest their role be taken by a for-profit company, or worse.